


Family Dinner

by Severina



Category: Die Hard (Movies)
Genre: Community: 1_million_words, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 04:06:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17911685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: Matt is anxious about being invited along to a McClane family dinner. Matt is actually quite smart.





	Family Dinner

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's 1_million_words February Bingo for the prompt "kiss me quick"
> 
> * * *

Matt thinks it's a little bit weird that he is invited along to the family dinner.

Granted, he has been living with John since they were both discharged from the hospital, John with a sling and a bad attitude and Matt with about a hundred and eighty pins in his leg. Okay, ten pins. But it felt like a hundred and eighty. At least.

Lucy might have felt it would be awkward if they left him alone in John's rambling old house to eat, like, Kraft Dinner while John was noshing on steak and lobster. Or maybe it was Holly who decided that "John's little sidekick" should be included – and yes, he'd heard her call him that and fine, maybe he shouldn't have been listening on the extension but she's _Holly_ , the badass who dangled from a thirty story window and punched out Richard Thornburg on live television. 

Also, Matt kind of thinks of her as his rival.

Which is so ridiculously stupid as to not even bother mentioning. Holly and John have been apart for eons, absolutely centuries… Dinosaurs roamed the earth when they were together. Fish crawled gasping onto the muddy ground and took their first non-liquid breaths when John and Holly were a couple.

And he and John have been together for, like, inches. However long it takes to burst a balloon, that is how long he and John have been together. And that bursting balloon analogy really sucks because it's kind of how he feels every day, that waiting for the other shoe to drop feeling, when John will roll over in bed and realize that he's shacking up with some under-achieving non-conformist ex-hacker and come to his senses and kick Matt to the curb. In his most vivid imaginings, it's Lucy who finds him mewling on the sidewalk, clutching his bad leg.

Lucy. Whom neither he nor John has actually informed that their relationship has moved on from 'platonic buddies with Gabriel-induced injuries' to 'romantic partners who are fucking nightly like wild monkeys'. (Sometimes two or three times a night, let's be honest, because John can make all the jokes about his stamina he wants, but yowza.) Lucy, who sometimes still semi-flirts with him on the phone and all he can seem to do is awkward-laugh before he hands the receiver over to John and goes to bury his head in his pillow.

Lucy, who is walking toward him right this moment.

"Hey, Farrell, you're here early!" she calls out. 

"Yeah, hey, nothing gets past you, Gennero," Matt answers. She's unwinding some kind of twenty seven foot long diaphanous scarf as she heads toward him, heels clicking on the pavement, and it comes to him how _together_ John's daughter is, with her runway walk and her self-defense skills and her bouncy hair. She's way out of his league even if he did swing that way, and the realization makes him relax a little. 

Lucy stops a few feet away, tails of the scarf skimming the toes of her shoes. "Where's my dad?"

"On his way?" Matt says. "I dunno. We didn't come together."

_John's breath wafts across the nape of his neck, making him shiver even as he pushes back. The stretch and burn has eased now, and all he feels is hot, and full, and on the precipice of something monumental. When he reaches for his dick John slaps his hand away and Matt bites his lip, the_ thrill _of that coursing through him, tipping him closer to the edge… and then John's hand wraps around his cock and starts pumping him, slowly, then faster, the speed matching the rhythmic slap of John's hips against his ass. Matt drops his forehead to the mattress, close, so close…_

_"Together," John says into his spine. "Wait for me, Matty. Wanna come with you…"_

"…att! FARRELL!"

" _What?"_ Matt yelps, back to the here and now, with the cool September breeze tugging at his collar, not John's breath, and yeah, is it unseasonably hot out here? 

"You with me?" Lucy asks. Her brow is furrowed, her lips pursed in concern. "You went all pale and… swoony."

"Swoony?" Matt repeats. Great, just great. Now he's _swooning_ over John McClane like a teenybopper over Zac Efron. Who, actually, is pretty cute. But he's no McClane.

Aaaaaand Lucy is still looking at him like he might keel over, and he really can't tell her that he just took a physic header back to Thursday night. "Sorry," he mumbles. He lifts his cane just a little, waves it around close to the ground. "Physio. Was rough today."

"Shit," Lucy says. She glances at the brace on his knee and he sees the whole How It Happened flit by on her face before she raises her gaze again to his. "Sorry, Matt. Let's go inside and see if we can sit at the bar while we're waiting."

Matt is totally down for sitting at the bar, and probably downing half a dozen Bloody Mary's because _why the hell did he agree to this dinner_ but then Lucy is taking him by the arm and her breast is pressing _right_ against him and that can't be an accident, can it? And he kind of goes speechless which is so very rare as she talks to the maitre'd and leads them toward two bar stools and then there's the whole awkwardness of trying to hike his way up to a seventeen foot tall bar stool with his bad leg so he just kind of stands. There. With one butt cheek leaning on the stool and one arm resting on the bar in the most uncomfortable position ever. Like if someone told him to 'look cool' and he automatically assumed the most gawky and uncoordinated pose in the history of awkward poses. Like if there was an Awkward Pose Oscar, he would win. Like if—

"Matt?"

"Huh?"

"You're doing that ghost-face thing again," Lucy says. "You want to bail? I can call you a taxi."

Bail. Yes! 

But then John would be stuck there alone, and he'd specifically said that he was looking forward to having Matt meet his son. All Matt knows of Jack is that he'd been into CB radios when he was a kid, so he's semi-hopeful that they'll have something electronic-y to bond over. Otherwise he'll just be sitting there throughout dinner trying not to stare at John too much while listening to a bunch of inside family jokes and OMG IS LUCY'S HAND ON HIS KNEE?

Lucy's hand is on his knee.

"Bail," he says weakly. "That might be—"

"Oh SHIT," Lucy says.

"—a really good idea," Matt finishes. But Lucy is looking beyond him, toward the door that he knows is opening because there's suddenly a cold draught tickling his collar, and she's got that slightly murderous look that he remembers from when she instep-stomped a burly guy with a loaded weapon. Also from when she told him to grow a bigger set of balls. Also from when… oh hell, that's practically Lucy's default look. 

"I don't believe him!" Lucy snaps.

Matt struggles to look around while maneuvering the whole one-butt-cheek awkward-arm-rest carrying-a-cane thing. "What—"

"Don't look!" Lucy hisses. "My asshole brother brought my old boyfriend! Hank. You remember I told you about him?"

"I don't—"

"The one that's been trying to get back together with me even though I _told_ him I'm interested in someone else," Lucy speed-talks as she flicks her hair back. "Apparently he doesn't listen very well, so we're just going to have to show him."

"I don't—" Matt tries again.

Lucy huffs out a breath before she tugs him to his wobbly feet. "Kiss me," she demands. "Quick!"

"I don't—" Matt begins for the third time.

"For Christ's sake, Farrell, man up! Kiss me!"

And when she leans in to take matters into her own hands, Matt does what he does best. He panics.

He leans back to avoid her lips, overcompensating for the lack of strength in his bad leg. His arms pinwheel, the left taking out Lucy's three-quarters-full glass of chardonnay. The stool tips over, his cane getting tangled in the ornately filigreed legs. And he falls backward into the oncoming path of a waiter, being sure to yell out "I'm dating your father!" loud enough for the entire restaurant to hear just before he topples into the server but just after John arrives with the rest of his family.

Yeah. That happens.

"Holly. Jack." John says. He looks, Matt thinks, even more intimidating when viewed from floor level. "This is my boyfriend, Matt."

"Hey," Matt says. 

Then he passes out.

* * *

"So," John says when they get home from the hospital. "News."

"Thomas Gabriel has a twin brother? Because honestly, I think that's the only thing that could be worse than--"

"We're banned from L'Escargot in perpetuity."

Matt would shrug, except his arm is in a sling. Also, he's sort of forgotten how. "Oh," he says. "That place looked snooty, anyway."

"And we're gonna try the family thing again on Tuesday before Holly flies back to California," John continues. "A simple meal here instead."

"Noooooo," Matt says. "John, that's the worst… the stove will explode, or the chandelier will burst into flames, or… or…"

"Or we'll have a nice, casual, friendly dinner."

"Or shinobi warriors hurtling nun chucks will crash through the dining room window!"

"Yes, that last one is very likely," John says dryly. "How much morphine did they give you, kid?"

"A smidge." Matt tries to indicate just how tiny a smidge with his fingers, except they're sort of flailing all over the place. And somehow while they've been talking John has manhandled him up the stairs and out of his clothes and into bed, and for some reason it's harder to move his fingers when he's lying down. Weird, but true. 

"Lucy's not comin'. She's pissed." John leans forward to conspiratorially whisper. "I think she has a crush on ya."

Matt rolls his head on the nice, cool pillow. "Will Holly punch me in the face?"

John huffs out a strangled laugh. "What?"

"I'd just really, really like not to be punched in the face," Matt says. "Or shot in the leg. Or get covered in fettucine alfredo."

"I'll make sure nothin' happens to you, kid."

Matt yawns and reaches out blindly, manages to catch John's shirtsleeve. "Did I mention I don't wanna get punched in… in…"

"The face," John finishes. "I got ya, Matty."

"Love you," Matt mumbles. "John?"

"Go to sleep, kid."

"Yeah," Matt agrees. "John."

"Yes, Matt."

"Kiss me. Quick."

The kiss John gives him is long and lingering and anything but quick. And before he drifts to sleep, Matt figures that he'd go through just about anything for a kiss like that.

Except get punched in the face. A guy's gotta draw the line somewhere.


End file.
